The Algae Testbed Public Private
Partnership (ATP3): Facilitating the
Commercialization of Algal
Technologies
Philip Pienkos
Biofuels 2015
August 27, 2015
NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.
Goal Statement
Mission: Establish a sustainable network of regional testbeds
that empowers knowledge creation and dissemination within
the algal R&D community, facilitates innovation, and
accelerates growth of the nascent algal biofuels and
bioproducts industry.
Goals:
- Increase stakeholder access to high quality, outdoor
cultivation and laboratory facilities
- Support DOE’s techno-economic, sustainability, and
resource modeling activities
- Help to close critical knowledge gaps and inform robust
analyses of the state of technology for producing algal
biofuels and bioproducts
ATP3’s Two Main Objectives
Collaborative Open Testbeds
• Establish network of facilities for the algal research community and
increase stakeholder access to real-world conditions for algal biomass
production.
• Accelerate applied algae research, development, investment, and
commercial applications for biofuel and bioproduct feedstock production.
High Impact Data from Long Term Algal Cultivation Trials
• Design and implement a unified experimental program across different
regional, seasonal, environmental and operational conditions comparing
promising production strains at meaningful scales.
• Data made widely available to the TEA/LCA and overall research
community allowing for a robust analysis of the state of technology.
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Collaborative Open Testbeds
ATP3 offers access to a wide array of services, capabilities and facilities:
Stakeholder Access
to Facilities
Testbed locations
Regional testbed facilities for the partnership are physically located
in Arizona, Hawaii, California, Georgia, and Florida.
Why Engage with ATP3?
Fuels
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Entry to US market
ATP3: Testbeds Open for Business
• Project Activities: biomass supply
(1kg-100’s kg), equipment testing,
analytical testing, culture
maintenance and consultation
services to academia, industry and
national labs
• Project Categories: fee-for service
activities, sponsored research, and
subsidized projects through ATP3
Support Program
• Project Benefits: access to facilities
to drive technology R&D, de-risk and
validate technological innovations
Variety of independent and vertically
integrated downstream harvesting unit ops
Provide service to ATP3
customers
- Produce algal biomass in
the form of slurry, paste
and dry powers
- Serve as baseline
technologies for the
improvement of future
harvesting/dewatering and
oil extraction processes
(Valicor and OpenAlgae
platforms)
Collaborative Open Testbeds:
Site Access and Customer Management
ATP3 Offers Support Program
The Goal – encourage and enable small businesses, entrepreneurs and underfunded
academic researchers to pursue new approaches to solving technical issues associated with
commercialization of algae biofuels, processes, and co-products.
What is it ?
- Access to laboratory, outdoor facilities and resource support for novel projects
- ATP3 provides subsidized access to testbed facilities, technical expertise, and M&S
- Preference for support will be given to:
•
•
•
•
Short-term projects ranging from 1-3 months (typical project target $10K-$30K)
Researchers willing to share data and results widely through publication
Projects that leverage on-going activities already occurring (e.g., UFS/AFS)
Vetted through internal TAB/Exec team review
Easy to start the process: Visit ATP3.org and fill out an expression of interest form
Initial cohort of support projects
Support may include:
includes:
 Biomass (whole, extracted, oil)






Novel cultivars for flue gas capture high
value products (University of Delaware)
Carbon management and delivery (LBNL)
AD with LEA (Cal Poly)
Feed-forward nutrient control (Penn State)
VAL for CO2/O2 and integrated culture
hydraulics and harvest (Searen LLC)
Rolling acceptance/review of applications




Access to cultivation & downstream
equipment (eq. transport, install/removal)
Access to R&D, production & analytical
expertise
Access to laboratory and office space
Travel stipends to testbed (currently limited to
academic clients)
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Open Collaborative Testbed: Summary
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Education & Training Workshops
•
•
•
•
ATP3 has hosted 7 quarterly educational workshops
Over 30 lecture modules
Over 15 hands-on field site and laboratory activities
Well attended by broad mix of academic and industrial
participants
• More than 200 participants representing >70 different
organizations
• 35% Foreign participants
• Most recent workshop: Large-Scale Cultivation and
Downstream Processing (Nov 3-7th; Mesa, AZ)
• “Principles and Processes: Algae Culture Maintenance,
Production and Downstream Processing” planned for May
2015 at NREL and CSM in Golden Colorado
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High Impact Data:
Long Term Algal Cultivation Trials
ATP3 sets standards and conducts harmonized, rigorous, and objective
long term cultivation trials to provide a realistic assessment of the state
of technology for algal based biofuels and bioproducts.
•
Our Unified Field Studies (UFS) at the testbed
sites along with our Advanced Field Studies (AFS)
enable comparison of promising production strains
at meaningful scale across variable conditions
•
Our Scientific Data Management System and
validated, harmonized SOP’s for analytical and
production processes ensures data integrity
across all sites
•
Our data from the UFS and AFS will be made
publicly available and provide a critical resource to
TEA and LCA analysis yielding high impact,
validated data
Productivity metrics:
• Volumetric dry weight
• Ash Free dry weight
• Lipids
• Carbohydrates
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• Protein
Standardization of processes and systems is
key to executing meaningful multi-site
cultivation trials
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UFS Strains/Cultivar: Primary
Nannochloropsis oceanica (KA32), supplied by Cellana
– Not expected to be high productivity but known stable and robust cultivar
especially for inland sites – key for establishing baseline seasonal/regional
performance
• Chlorella vulgaris, (LRB-AZ-1201) supplied by ASU
– Known to be less robust (open pond), but available and importable to HI, high
performer in PBR’s
• Additional strains to be used for AFS (and as part of UFS in 2015)
– Scenedesmus acutus
– Desmodesmus sp.
• Representative cultivars for fuel and high value production (feed, omega3’s)
– Substantial historical data for all strains (faster project startup)
– Unencumbered with little restrictions on strain/biomass distribution to third
parties
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2014 Seasons: Unified Field Studies
Spring
2014/2015 Unified Field Study M
Experimental Outline 1
A
Summer
M
J
J
Fall
A
S
O
Winter
N
D
J
F
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52
Seed production/pond prep
Nannochloropsis Only
Strain switch
Chlorella Only
Data sharing/reports
One strain in panels, Other strain in columns
• Prime
trials:
2015/2016
Unified FieldGoal
Study M forA year
M 1 UFS
J
J
A Establish
S
O
N
D
J
F
Experimental
Outline 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Baseline
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19for
20 21 22 primary
23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30cultivars
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52
Seasonal/Regional
Seed production/pond prep
• Season = 12 weeks
Dln Rate
Nannochloropsis
Chlorella
Dln Rate
N Source Depth
Dln Rate
pH
PW Speed Dln Rate Strain
TBD
Rate
– Target ofDln10-11
weeks dedicated to cultivation in ponds
Data sharing/reports
– Seasons ran two strains in series
– 2 weeks for initial grow out, and a target of min of 3 weeks of cultivation per
strain after growout. Run under conditions where N:P and Ci not limited
– <1 week to turn ponds for next strain
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– Repeat
Four Seasons of Production Runs
N. oceanica KA32, ASU
Spring
Summer
diatom
Fall
Winter
Four Seasons of Production Runs
C. vulgaris LRB-AZ-1201, ASU
Spring
Summer
Fall
Winter
Poteriochromonas
Harvest Yield Productivity Data
Nannochloropsis oceanica KA32
Clear seasonal effect at every site with distinctive variations
Harvest
Period
Experiment
Duration
Challenges for N. oceanica KA32
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Challenges for C. vulgaris LRB-AZ-1201
ASU
Cal Poly
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First counts for pond 12, 15 and 16 on 2/11
First counts for Pond 11 on 2/13
First counts for Pond 13, 14 on 2/16
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Advanced Diagnostics:
Metagenomics of ATP3 Pond Samples
Sample acquisition
•
•
•
•
Harvesting by centrifugation: 50 mL samples
Resuspension in RNALater
Storage at 4° overnight followed by -20°
Shipment on wet ice.
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Advanced Diagnostics Summary
• Workflow for sequencing high
throughput 16S and 18S
metagenomic samples established
• New bioinformatics software
pipeline which is
– fast and efficient to carry out the
analysis and producing user
friendly outputs
– pipelines used and developed:
• MAGPie (Metagenomics and
Amplicon Sequencing Pipeline)
• & RapTOR (Rapid Threat Organism
Recognition)
• In process - developing and
improving our data-mining tools for
in-depth analysis of these datasets
• Progressing through summer and
fall samples now
• Data sets will be made available
with the cultivation data
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Public Access to Data
Using the existing infrastructure
and expertise of OpenEI.org will
provide a rapid, robust, and lowcost solution for making the ATP3
datasets public. Initial summary
data and protocols available –
detail curated data for year 1 of
UFS to be complete this summer.
Summary
 ATP3 has established a users facility across five sites in the US to increase
stakeholder access to high quality, outdoor cultivation and laboratory
facilities.
 Our fee structure and site access plan can provide customers with the
appropriate framework for conducting business.
 Our education program provides hands on wet lab experience in algal
cultivation and down stream processing.
 Our internal research program has established a validated framework for
implementing rigorous, long-term multi-site cultivation trials
 We have generated data to determine the effects of regional, seasonal,
environmental variation that is to be expected for a national (international)
deployment of algae cultivation
 We have established baseline performance across multiple seasons and
have begun to expand that with additional strains and cultivation systems into
CY 2016.
 By making data publically available, we will enable the modeling community
(biomass productivity, TEA, LCA and RA) to refine their assessments and
help understand the path to commercializaton.
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ATP3 partners
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Acknowledgements
ASU
Gary Dirks
John McGowen
Thomas Dempster
Milt Sommerfeld
William Brandt
Jessica Cheng
Jordan McAllister
Sarah Arrowsmith
David Cardello
Theresa Rosov
Mary Cuevas
Maria Bautista
Jeffrey Prairie
Richard Malloy
Xuezhi Zhang
Henri Gerken
Pierre Wensel
Linda Boedeker
Sarah Mason
Travis Johnson
Sydney Lines
UTEX
Schonna Manning
Jerry Brand
Valicor Renewables
Kiran Kadam
Brian Goodall
NREL
Phil Pienkos
Lieve Laurens
Ed Wolfrum
David Crocker
Ryan Davis
Stefanie Van Wychen
Eric Knoshaug
Sandia National Labs
Ron Pate
Todd Lane
Patricia Gharagozloo
Thomas Reichardt
Jessica Drewry
Pamela Lane
Cellana
Valerie Harmon
Martin Sabarsky
Emily Knurek
Kate Evans
Peter Prentiss
Reyna Javar
Kari Wolff
Keao Bishop-Yuan
Lynn Griswold
Christina Boyko
Charlie O’Kelley
Kelli Yamane, BS
Radu Mihaila, MS
Egan Rowe
Cal Poly
Tryg Lundquist
Braden Crowe
Eric Nicolai
Garrett Murawsky
Ruth Spierling
Open Algae
Peter Kipp
Hoyt Thompson
ASU Undergrads
Wyatt Western
Mariah Patton
Carlos Luna
Delaney De
Hertogh
Shaylin Mcghee
Caden Offield
GT Undergrads
Fariha Hassan
Jerry Duncan
Frazier Woodruff
Shusuke Doi
Hao Fu
Patricia PenalverArgueso
Allison Dunbar
Allison Carr
Florida Algae
Steven Schlosser
Chris Withstandley
Mary Riddle
Nancy Pham Ho (FIT)
Commercial Algae
Management
Albert Vitale
Robert Vitale
Sichoon Park
Priya Pradeep
Catherine Achukwu
Christine Yi
Asmita Narode
Chunyan Xu
Yuankun Zhao
Kangyan Wu
Sarasija Cheruvu
CP Undergrads
Aydee Melgar
Gulce Ozturk
Kaitlyn Jones
Michael Antoine
Trung K Tran
Jake Bender
Heather Freed
Daniel McBroom
Michele Hendrickson
Brandon Miller
Georgia Tech
Yongsheng Chen
Steven Van Ginkel
Thomas Igou
Zixuan Hu
Terry Snell
Gerard Nguyen
Deven Diliberto
Jack Sunderland
Dan Averbuj
Ann Marie Sequeira
Lauren Miller
Michele Hendrickson
Emily Wang
Jack Sunderland
Ann Marie Sequeira
Soroush Aboutalebi
Lauren Miller
Samantha Lui
Michele Hendrickson
Gabriella Campos
Will Briles
Letty Thottathil
Marissa License
Sam Cronin
Eric Krikorian
Javier Garcia
Esme Diego
Brett Kelley
Sarah Atmadja
Nicholas Hardy
Ryan Stump
Anna Klavins
Cris Swain
Jessica Duffey
Ryan Yanda
Taylor Gater
Rick Brundage
Hunter Lawless
Jared Stine
Sophia De Guia
Joshua Tenhet
Samantha Bock
Leland Lam